Up in the Air, released this Friday sees George Clooney racking up some serious air-miles as Ryan Bingham. Bingham has a job that involves going from business to business firing people. Consequently, he lives his life out of a suitcase and spends more time in the air than on the ground.
Airports in real life may be a series of annoying queues, incomprehensible rules and perma-tanned staff but in the movies this all tends to be much more interesting. From the sublime to the ridiculous and from the ground to the air; here are our top ten aviation movies!
Airplane!
Airplane! is a satire on the air disaster movies that were so popular in the 1970's but even if you've never seen any of these, the film still stands alone as one of the most quotable films of all time. The script is almost ridiculously full of stupid/clever one liners; from "don't call me Shirley!" to "You evere seen a grown man naked?" Plot-wise it may be fairly light (food poisioning leaves a commercial flight without a pilot) but the scenery chewing performances and absurd word-play more than make up for it!
United 93
On a more serious note, Paul Greengrass' United 93 follows the unfolding drama aboard one of the hijacked plane on that fateful September day in 2001. The film takes place in real-time and is filmed in a realistic, un-showy way by Greengrass. It is a fitting testament to the bravery of the passengers on the flight who fought back against their hi-jackers and ultimately prevented them from reaching the assigned target; the U.S. Capitol. This is an incredibly intense piece of cinema but more than that is an important historical document.
Con Air
Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) is a man who just can't catch a break. On the night he returns from Desert Storm, he and his pregnant wife are accosted by three drunks. When Poe accidentally kills one of the men in the fight that ensues, he is sent to jail. Eight years later, he is released but must hitch a ride home on a flight teeming with some of the worst criminals alive...and none of them are too keen on getting to their destination. This is fun action with some wonderfully OTT performances from some serious actor types such as John Malkovich and Steve Buscemi.
Die Hard 2
Next time you complain about long queues at the airport, just remember Die Hard 2 and thank your lucky stars that you weren't in Washington Dulles Airport on Christmas Eve 1990! Yet again John McClane finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time as terrorists take over the terminal while he awaits the arrival of his wife. Luckily McClane came equipped with his trusty white vest and he's ready to unleash hell on the gang before his wife's plane runs out of fuel and plummets to earth.
The Terminal
From a whole lot of chaos going on in an airport building, to a whole lot of nothing! Tom Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, a hapless tourist from a small Eastern-bloc country who finds himself stranded in JFK airport when a coup in his home country leaves him without a home nation and a passport that has just become invalid. Unable to set foot into the United States and unable to go home, Victor is forced to set up home in the terminal, much to the irritation of Immigration Officer Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci).